Gardens flourish under summer rain

Our mountain world has become green and lush with verdant meadows and wonderful wildflowers. In the past couple years, mountain gardeners have pushed beyond the boundaries of perennial flower gardens and moved into the reality of growing food.
This summer the daily rain showers have urged vegetables and herbs to spring forth and produce. Everything is larger, healthier and just plain more abundant.
Last Saturday, Aug. 3, the Peaceful Meadow Farm on County Road 68 opened its farm stand which already is overflowing with produce including Mizuna, Tat Soi, Kamatsuna, Pac Choy, red mustard greens, spinach, wild arugula, sugar snap peas, swiss chard, Daikon radishes, beets red Russian kale, zucchini, Suyo Long cucumbers and basil.The veggies just keep growing. The farm stand offered the first ‘Music in the Barn’ program, featuring Anthony Salvo and his friend Tito Malaga, who performed Rhumba Flamenco and Andalusian music.
Along with the music, organic snacks, live food made up a one-of-a-kind menu and packed with fresh, unheated, whole, unprocessed organic fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds that retain all of their natural enzymes, vitamins, minerals, amino acids and nutrients, provided rocket-fuel for bodies and minds.
As word-of-mouth praises spread, more and more people are visiting this small piece of paradise on earth. Last Wednesday, July 31, the Nederland Area Seniors made the trip to the meadow with the large, weather-worn barn, the greenhouses, the llama, the goats, the chickens, the rows of plants and the twin sister peaks standing like fortresses against the wind above it all. The Peaceful Meadow owner said the seniors enjoyed refreshing cucumber lemonade after a tour of the gardens but he thinks the gooseberries were the highlight of their trip.
Elmore began farming the expansive meadow in 2006 and opened the first Saturday Farm Stand in the summer of 2007. The farm is certified naturally grown and the greenhouse and stand are 100 percent off the grid, solar powered. The small two-wheel walk-behind tractor uses bio-diesel fuel. Elmore and his wife and three children live an almost autonomous existence. The children are home-schooled and learning everything there is to know about sustainability.
They are also involved in experimenting with growing vegetables that grow best in our climate and altitude, and every year the crops become more abundant. As the children played a pickup softball game, adults chatted and explored. One man even went back to his childhood and climbed a rope ladder to the rafters in the barn and proceeded to do a balancing act that had observers gasping at his antics.
Farm stand hours are from 4:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., on Saturdays, a good time to stay and watch the sun set against the surrounding hills. It is peak harvest time and will be all this month. It is so family friendly that the children have to be dragged away from all the fun things to see and do.
For more information go to peacefulmeadowfarm.org.